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Victims' Symptom : glossary:collective-guilt

Iyer A (2007) examined emotions as predictors of opposition to policies and actions of one's country that are perceived to be illegitimate. Two studies investigated the political implications of American and British citizens' anger, guilt, and shame responses to perceived harm caused by their countries' occupation of Iraq. In both studies, a manipulation of pervasive threat to the country's image increased participants' shame but not guilt. The emotions predicted political action intentions to advocate distinct opposition strategies. Shame predicted action intentions to advocate withdrawal from Iraq. Anger predicted action intentions to advocate compensation to Iraq, confrontation of agents responsible, and withdrawal from Iraq. Anger directed at different targets (ingroup, ingroup representative, and outgroup representative) predicted action intentions to support distinct strategies (Study 2). Guilt did not independently predict any political action intentions.

Tangney (2007), discusses that moral emotions represent a key element of human moral apparatus, influencing the link between moral standards and moral behavior. He reviews current theory and research on moral emotions. Focus was first put on a triad of negatively valenced “self-conscious” emotions-shame, guilt, and embarrassment. Tangney discusses current thinking on the distinction between shame and guilt, and the relative advantages and disadvantages of these two moral emotions. Several new areas of research are highlighted: research on the domain-specific phenomenon of body shame, styles of coping with shame, psychobiological aspects of shame, the link between childhood abuse and later proneness to shame, and the phenomena of vicarious or “collective” experiences of shame and guilt. In recent years, the concept of moral emotions has been expanded to include several positive emotions-elevation, gratitude, and the sometimes morally relevant experience of pride.

McGarty (2005) investigated whether the Australian government should officially apologize to Indigenous Australians for past wrongs is hotly debated in Australia. One study showed that group-based guilt was a good predictor of support for a government apology, as was the perception that non-Indigenous Australians were relatively advantaged. The second study found that group-based guilt was an excellent predictor of support for apology and was itself predicted by perceived non-Indigenous responsibility for harsh treatment of Indigenous people, and an absence of doubts about the legitimacy of group-based guilt. National identification was not a predictor of group-based guilt. The results of the two studies suggest that, just as individual emotions predict individual action tendencies, so group-based guilt predicts support for actions or decisions to be taken at the collective level.